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Five Poems from Quarantina

By Kit Robinson



THE FOURTH OF JULY


Leaves of interdependence
Birds depend on air
Songs depend on ear
I depend on you
You depend on me
We are interdependable
Like the flora & fauna
Of whom we are a part
Like mountains & rivers
Upon works of art


7/4/20




PREMIER ETUDE


The mind moves
As water moves
In waves
Wind at their back

The mind moves
As fire moves
In lines
Under heavy smoke

The mind moves
As earth moves
Spinning
Through darkness and light

The mind moves
As the body moves
On two legs
One step at a time

The mind moves
As the planets move
Elliptically
Around the sun


9/15/20






WHAT IS A TREE?


What is a tree?
A tree is a premature book
In its leaves I read
The history of the future
More specific than you would have ever thought

What is a chair?
A chair is an empty person
Relaxing in part sun
Part shade to wind chimes
Touching in the breeze

What is a fence?
A dead leaf in a knothole
Would have you believe
In the inexhaustibility
Of phenomena

What is a line?
It connects two points and droops a little in the middle
To describe a shallow curve
With no towels hanging from it
In bright sun

What is a cone?
A dirty orange traffic warning
Next to a concrete block
With a white plastic cap
The base for an umbrella

What are flowers?
Black-eyed Susan climbing over the fence
Snow-in-summer
Deep red geraniums at home among rocks
Kids on break from Zoom


10/14/20






2021: SPACE DECAMERON


We are companions in the disaster
War, corruption, drought, fire & plague
What else is new?
What binds the I to what’s seen?
My dream a drink with Ron Carter

We’re all astronauts now
Living in a bubble with our pod mates
Real and imagined
As in Tarkovsky’s Solaris
Or Sun Ra’s Rocket Number Nine

Space is the place
We occupy and contain
In equal and opposite measure

The I contains multitudes
Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness

Have you had breakfast?
Clean your bowl
Emptiness is the mother of all


1/2/21






VARIANT FOOT


The second shot
I got a buzz
A safety high

“The world goes round
And the other side comes up
So now I can’t write what I felt”

A surplus of incidents
Between talking and driving
Tale of the missed turn

At least somebody
Stood up for the music
I find patches of it now and then

Now we can even hear
Wind on Mars
Calling us home

Hello? Hello?
The piano lays out
The horn continues on alone

Quiet, I hear footprints
The last comedian
Hanging out by the hat check

A blues as casual
As seasonal labor
Lights up the night sky

It’s been a long year
A ghostly time
And still we walk among the dead

From day to day
That’s what a day is
A frame for multiple viewpoints

Somewhere along the way
I started writing
In a more accessible way

More communicative
I guess you could say
But always with something else

Something more
Than can be easily said
Of a return to earth

The singer speaks
From the heart
The chorus responds

With affirmation and consent
We were here all along
Even as we hurried along


2/24/21



Kit Robinson is a Bay Area poet, writer, and musician. He is the author of Thought Balloon (Roof, 2019), Leaves of Class (Chax, 2017), Marine Layer (BlazeVOX, 2015), and twenty other books of poetry. His essays on poetics, art, travel, and music may be found online at Open Space and Nowhere.

Read next: Poetry by Michelle Naka Pierce



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.